Oracle tops corporate software usage study

Fresh from its annual OpenWorld conference last week, Oracle earned top rankings in a corporate software usage study released by ChangeWave, an investment research firm.

Chris Kanaracus, IDG News Service
November 21, 2007

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Fresh from its annual OpenWorld conference last week, OpenWorld earned top rankings in a corporate software usage study released by ChangeWave, an investment research firm.

The study also found that 18% of respondents planned to spend more money on software within the next 90 days and 14% planned to spend less.

The study, which was conducted during October, surveyed 1,780 people involved with IT spending in their organisations, according to ChangeWave.

The study found that 36% of respondents use Oracle's business-intelligence (BI) software in their companies, up eight points from the last survey, which was conducted in July. However, Microsoft followed closely behind with 35%, according to ChangeWave. Hyperion Solutions, which Oracle acquired this year, also saw gains for its BI offerings, moving up five points to 19%.

For customer relationship management (CRM) software, Oracle maintained the 26% usage rate pegged by the July study, followed by SAP and Microsoft with 17% and 16%, respectively. Oracle also made modest gains for enterprise resource planning (ERP), rising two points to 32% behind leader SAP, which had 38% usage. Microsoft showed much stronger momentum here, however, shooting up 15 points to 29% according to ChangeWave.

The organisation also asked respondents to reveal from which vendors their companies planned to purchase software in the next three months. Oracle showed a 5% uptick, while SAP remained flat and Microsoft dipped by five points.

"Oracle is showing surprising strength in an otherwise calm macro environment," said Paul Carton, director of research at ChangeWave.

Carton also said the findings regarding increased software spending are a positive sign for the industry overall. "The fact is we've seen this downtick all year, and to see it stabilising now is interesting," he said.

Carton said 83% of ChangeWave's pool of about 10,000 potential respondents are in the US and 17% are in Canada and Europe , and the survey results should be viewed accordingly. "Essentially, you're looking at the Nasdaq economy and how it buys stuff," he said. But, he asserted, "It's always been great at measuring market share."

The study findings arrive several days after the conclusion of OpenWorld in San Francisco, during which Oracle previewed its next-generation Fusion applications and launched a virtualisation product, Oracle VM.